Thursday, August 4, 2016

A Real Dick Fights For Liberty

I have to admit, the first time I saw an Adam Dick essay at ronpaulinstitute.org, it was so solid I thought that Ron Paul Institute executive director Daniel McAdams had written the piece under a pen name.

It was that good.

The only difference was that it was about a broad-based libertarian theme, rather than having a focus on foreign policy, which is McAdam's specialty.

Wow, I thought to myself, watch for Adam Dick columns, this is when McAdams is going to really let it rip on broad-based libertarian topics.

Well, as it turns out, there really is an Adam Dick and his writings are nothing short of intellectual beheadings of anti-freedom advocates and ideas.

The book assembles Dick's essays from a libertarian perspective on the current issues of the day.

It's all here, including essays on the drug war. the assault on our civil liberties, privacy, and freedom. The militarization of the police, excessive incarceration and NSA spying.

For those of you who need to shore up your arguments against statists, this book is a valuable weapon. It also is a great book to give to friends or acquaintances that you want to introduce to libertarian ideas.

To get a sense of the style and hardcore strength Dick brings to his writing, here are a few snippets from his book:

Hey, Obama, How About Freeing the Nearly 100,000 Drug War Victims in US Prisons?

What’s the hold up? President Jimmy Carter, on his first full day in office, pardoned thousands of people for the nonviolent and victimless crime of evading the US government’s military conscription. Obama could take similarly heroic action by freeing thousands of drug war prisoners from federal prisons.
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[F]reedom is for every day, not just for one day a year. Let’s make every day a holiday from marijuana sin taxes.
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With many Americans having just experienced their Thanksgiving TSA harassment and dreading another round at Christmas, cheers would sound across America if the House passed legislation terminating or, at least, greatly restricting the TSA assaults on our rights.
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The Republican leadership in the House appears poised to push a foreign policy agenda aiming to eliminate the remnants of the American Founders’ nonintervention principles. Yet, likely because this agenda is the opposite of what American public opinion supports, the leadership is advancing the agenda with a deceitful claim of sanction by the American Founders. Time will tell if modern day George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons, and Paul Reveres are able to alert the people and if a new revolution can reinstate values more in line with the peace and prosperity Washington endorsed in his farewell address.
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Boehner is Exhibit A in this two-faced abrogation of responsibility.
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American politicians should follow the advice [Ron] Paul has vigorously expressed since soon after Snowden’s first revelations: End the mass surveillance program and “get rid of the NSA.”
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If You Want to Get Rid of ‘Racist Flags,’ How About Starting with the American Flag?
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There are many ways individuals can take part in advancing peace and liberty against crisis and leviathan. And there is reason for hope. Some encouragement may be gained from reflecting on the concluding sentences of Malcolm Gladwell’s intriguing book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference:

In the end, Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action, Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push — in just the right place — it can be tipped.